Wrist watch reviews

December 25, 2018

Imperant Commander (Review)

Today we are gonna take a look at another pretty affordable watch for 130$ which is a pretty good looking and doesn’t look something that you can buy with a different logo on eBay like most of the brands that come out now do. The company we are looking at today is the Imperant and they have two collections. The quartz and automatic. They both share the same case and design, but the automatic one has different movement of course and the dial, as the automatic one has the day complication at 12 o’clock. Imperant are based in the USA and are making pretty simple design watches but with great quality for affordable price.

They sent me the quartz one (hoping to check out in the future the automatic one too) and the version they sent me is the Commander which is with a black dial and black strap. The watch came in a pretty nice box. Inside the box, you will find the watch and the warranty card. The first impressions were mixed, as at first, it looked like a fashion watch, but when I picked it up, it has some weight, then I noticed the crown and the machine work, finish I thought to myself: it looks pretty good actually! I really like that large pilot watch style crown it has, I’m a fan of those.

The case of the Commander is made of 316L stainless steel. The machine work is very good with sharp and expressed lines. The case style is very simple with round middle portions and with curved lugs which wrap your wrist nicely even if you have a bit smaller wrists. The finishing all over the case is satin brushed. The finishing is done quite good for a watch with the price so low. The diameter of the case is 44mm, the thickness is 10,7mm and from lug to lug it measures at 51,4mm. The watch is pretty big, probably too big as of I would like it, but it looks good on the wrist. At 3 o’clock we have a polished pilot style push-pull crown and on the side, it is signed with Imperant logo. The crown is pretty big and easy to manipulate. The solid screw in case back has a nice etching of the Imperant logo and some specifications. On top of the watch sits a flat sapphire crystal. The water resistance is 5ATM (50M) so swimming with it is not recommended.

The flat black dial is very simple and easy to read. The applied hour markers have a polished outline and white inside. The arrowhead hour and minute hands are bold and just like the hour markers have polished outline with white inside. The second’s hand is slim with arrow style pointer at the end. At 12 o’clock we have applied Imperant logo in polished silver colour. The square date window we have at 3 o’clock. The date wheel, unfortunately, is white rather than black that would match the dial. Surprisingly the lume is very good and lasts pretty long. The lume is applied on the markers and all hands.

Movement wise, I’m not sure what’s inside it, couldn’t find the exact one it has, but all I know is that it has a quartz movement from Miyota. But no more information is needed as all Japan-made quartz movements are great an will last lifetime with proper use. Plus it is quartz and it will be more precise than any other automatic movement will ever be in this price range. I always say that everyone needs at least one quartz watch in their collection because when you want to set your automatic watch, all you need is to look at the quartz watch as it will always show the precise time.

The strap that came with the Commander is a black leather one. The strap has a nice soft surface, something between suede and fine leather. The strap is pretty wide 24mm and tapers down to 22mm right to the buckle. The underside is tan brown signed with Imperant logo. The strap itself is very supple and will wrap your wrist nicely right out of the box. The tang-style buckle is made of stainless steel and is signed with Imperant logo. The buckle is actually pretty good and usually on the cheaper watches we see those very thin metal ones that look and feel cheap, but this one is pretty thick and feels good.

Overall the watch is kind of ok-ish. My main concern is the price, as you can buy watches for this price from many microbrands and some respectable brands like Orient or Seiko. Yes, it has great build quality, sapphire glass, good strap and design isn’t that bad too, but the only part that kind of throws me off is the quartz movement as it just begs for an automatic movement in that big case. Would I buy it? Well, I can’t be sure if I just started with watches, probably, as when I caught the watch bug, I wasn’t interested in those popular watches like Seiko SKX etc. But right now I’m interested more into watches with automatic movements or if it is quartz, it needs to be chronograph or something fun like Swatch or something.